A work-based research assessment of the impact of 'lean manufacturing' on health and safety education within an SME

Globalisation has had a major impact on the engineering industry as pacific Rim countries undercut manufacturing costs and provide a more cost-effective location for many businesses. Engineering in Nortehrn Ireland has mostly declined owing to increased competition from these countries. Engineering companies are now forced to streamline their production processes and employ cost-reducing practices in order to meet customer demands at reduced prices. This article aims to analyse the effects of one such streamlining endeavour which was first introduced after World War II in Japan- 'lean manufacturing' . 'Lean manufacturing' aims to reduce all wasteful activities within the production process in order to improve productivity, while reducing manufacturing costs. The work-based project under consideration was concerned with the impact 'lean manufacturing' may have on health and safety performance and education within an engineering company. The focus of the project was to determine through work-based research, and quantitative analysis, the employee perception on health and safety: has it changed (either positively or negatively), as a consequence of implementing 'lean manufacturing'.

On Extraterritoriality and the Gazprom case

In September 2012 the European Commission opened a formal investigation of Gazprom’s business practices in the EU. The Gazprom investigation raises a number of questions. One of them is the issue of jurisdiction—whether EU competition law applies to Gazprom, a foreign company. A day after the opening of the proceeding, in a press note and alongside other issues, Gazprom raised the question of jurisdiction, noting that it complies with laws of the countries in which it operates and that is it ‘registered outside the jurisdiction of the EU’. This statement, possibly, prompted some commentators to consider the applicability of EU law in this case.
In a piece in the ECLR, entitled ‘Iron Curtain at the border: Gazprom and the Russian blocking order to prevent the extraterritoriality of EU competition law’, Sean Morris offered his views on some of the aspects of the Gazprom case, including the issue of jurisdiction. Morris discussed also the blocking Order issued by the Russian President in response to the European Commission’s investigation, and its possible effects in the Gazprom case.
This article seeks to add a few important and relevant issues of law relating to extraterritoriality and the reach of EU law generally and in particular— in the context of the Gazprom investigation and in the light of the Morris article. This piece also sheds some light on the considerations which might have informed Russia’s hastily enactment of the Blocking Order.

Advancing Research on Men and Reproduction

While feminist scholarship has centred reproduction in women’s lives, it has inadequately explored its meanings in men’s. If we assume that reproduction happens in relationships of one kind or another between males and females, then missing men is a considerable oversight. Although there is now much research on fatherhood,merely focussing on this end-stage assumes that women take care of all of the foreplay, leaving unanswered questions in relation, inter alia, to men’s desires for parenthood,men’s involvement in planning or lack of planning to have children, the way men struggle or cope with infertility, their encounters with new reproductive technologies and surrogate mothers, their experiences of foetal screening, their involvement in abortion decision-making, and their experiences of becoming or not becoming a father. In this article I argue that men have compelling experiences throughout the reproductive trajectory deserving of more attention. I offer a profeminist theoretical composition for advancing further enquiries on men and reproduction,which begins with the feminism-informed Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities (CSM), and then weaves this together with the theories of intimate citizenship, sociology of the body, and the sociology of science and technology. I will propose how concepts from these collective theories may be useful in opening up layered questions about gender relations, intimacy, bodies, and technologies in future studies of men and reproduction.